


Playing Pawns

by headbuttingbears



Category: X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Chess, Gen, I'm Sorry, Light Angst, Mindwiping, So Much Chess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-28
Updated: 2016-05-28
Packaged: 2018-07-10 19:48:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7004005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/headbuttingbears/pseuds/headbuttingbears
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Come play the sport of kings!!</i> | Erik Lehnsherr, history teacher, starts a chess club and makes a new friend. If only he could remember the man's name...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Playing Pawns

**Author's Note:**

> Set after XMFC and gleefully ignores everything after that movie specifically.
> 
> Once upon a time in Ultimates, Charles mind-wiped Erik in an effort to rehabilitate him. It didn't turn out so well, but that didn't stop me from wondering what a similar idea would look like loosely adapted to XMFC. I'm a hack, so sue me.
> 
> Warning: chess. A lot of chess. Everything I can remember about chess.
> 
> Finally, this is EXTREMELY old, but I'm very fond of it so I figured I'd throw it out there in case someone had a strong desire to read about Erik interacting with a trillion small children (there aren't a trillion, I promise). Thanks to blithesea for encouraging me to give it a second look.

They come to him in October, when the leaves have started to turn. A small enough group, five or six, all but one of them fifth-graders and the lone fourth-grader is Jacob Kaufmann's sister, dark-eyed and serious Anja (Annie, she's started correcting people).

"Bandwagonners," he laughs when they first ask. "This is because of that Fischer boy, isn't it?"

None of them deny it; one or two even start to gush, like they're talking about Mickey Mantle and not some poor Jewish kid from the neighborhood who plays a board game.

Of course he folds immediately.

 

Little posters pop up around the school, one on every floor and the corkboard by the office, where all the clubs post their announcements. They're not bad looking posters; someone in the club has an artistic bent, and, judging by the way the posters all exclaim _Come play the sport of kings!!,_ a flair for the dramatic as well. Still, they just fail at doubling their numbers, and Erik pays for the chess sets himself as the club falls under the minimum for school discretionary funding.

Their first meeting is on a Tuesday. They'll meet twice a week, he says, looking the group over and meeting alternately nervous, excited, and nervously excited eyes.

"Tuesdays and Thursdays at lunch. Any objections?"

Nobody says anything, which is typical of a class full of ten-year-olds.

"Alright then. Who doesn't know how to play?" Two hands come up – Ben Thompson, blond and tall for his age; Laurel Richmond, one of the three girls in the group, brown hair up in pigtails with red ribbons, shooting a quick glare at her friend, Sarah Burnett, who's standing next to her and oblivious, picking at her nail polish.

Only two – he's pleased.

"You two, come up here with me. The rest of you, pair up and go to it," and he gestures to the boards set out on the desks and the rearranged chairs. They go to with gusto, and there's a low bit of chatter as the kids set the pieces up. They'll introduce themselves while playing, the way kids usually do on the playgrounds.

Laurel and Ben come up to the front, and he lays out the pieces, names them and describes their movements, puts them in their proper places. He sets them up to play pawns, letting them get used to the lower ranks, and sees little Anja standing off to the side, watching her brother play. Looks around the rest of the room – eleven altogether, unfortunate – and waves Anja over.

"I don't have anyone to play with, Annie," he says sadly, leaning over to look her in the eye. "Everyone else has a partner and those two-" he nods to Laurel and Ben "-have abandoned me. Will you play me?"

Anja considers him for a moment before nodding, and he feels as though he's passed some sort of inspection.

She plays better than he expected.

 

Three weeks later and the lot of them are dawdling outside his door, poking and whispering to each other before Jacob, apparently the ringleader, steps forward. "Mr. Lehnsherr, when are we going to compete?"

He pauses in stacking the boxes, pieces rattling inside. "Do you want to?"

A collective nod. "All the other sports teams do," Sarah pipes up from the back.

"Fair enough. I'll see what I can do," he says. The group chatters happily as they disperse for afternoon classes; only Tommy Danforth is in his afternoon history class, and he leaves to stow his lunchbox in his locker.

 

At home, Erik makes some calls around, flipping through the yellow pages and his address book for Board of Ed friends. The general consensus is that they've missed the boat at registering for the winter term, and he despairs for a moment, setting the handset back in the cradle with a click and sighing. Max winds around his ankles, chirping, and he scoops the cat up into his lap to let her push her face into his palm while he thinks.

 

Tuesday, and he waits for them to tuck into their lunches first before breaking the bad news. They all look at each other, some looking like irritated squirrels, their cheeks full of sandwich, while others look more bemused.

Towards the back, Clint McMurray raises his hand. "What about Central Park? My grampa goes to play there all the time. Can we go there?"

Erik rocks back onto his heels, hands shoved into his pockets as he thinks it over. It would have to be set up as a fieldtrip, and he'd need to get some permission forms together, clear it with Mr. Tilden, maybe on a Saturday, warm the parents up to the idea by getting the kids out of their hair for a bit...

"Perhaps," he says, not wanting to promise them anything. You never promise anything when you're a teacher, not if you can avoid it.

 

Saturday morning on a November in Manhattan is chilly, and he's pleased to see the kids all bundled up. Hats and gloves on the lot of them, some looking a little oversized but none without. They take the subway, the kids far more laidback than Erik about it – he feels like a nervous wreck, watching them all, making sure everyone's sticking with their buddy and he hasn't lost anyone. They make it to the park and there are piles of dead leaves everywhere, the kids running through them happily but never too far, and when they finally make it to the tables he gathers them in a huddle.

"Okay, now treat this like a real tournament. Be polite – I can guarantee that most of these men have been playing for longer than I've been alive." That earns couple of giggles, and he smiles. "These are your grandmasters. Watch their moves. Learn. Play if you get a chance. They like to play just as much as you do or else they wouldn't be here." Nods all around and he claps his hands together. "Go."

They go.

 

90 minutes later and he's getting hungry, but the kids are hooked. Four of them have somehow set up a team-style variant of blitz chess that makes him laugh to keep from cringing, while the rest have adopted the old men's bad habits and are kibitzing on a single game.

He wanders over from the blitz rounds to see who's playing, not surprised to see it's Anja in the middle of it all, looking grim as usual. She's playing a man, a stranger closer to Erik's own age. He's thoroughly pleasant-looking, cheeks rosy in the early afternoon cold as he smiles across the board at Anja and murmurs something. She giggles, shocking Erik, and he looks down at her over the crowd of kids to watch her push forward a rook with one mittened hand. The man peers at her, and the old men huddled around him mutter to each other darkly, one or two clapping him on the shoulder before departing.

"They think I'm doomed," the man says, clasping his hands together and resting his chin on them to survey the board, sounding quite droll and upper-crust. "What do you think?"

Anja looks on as well as her brother leans forward to whisper something into her ear; she swats a hand at him absently, making the rest of the group laugh as Jacob rubs his nose.

"You still have a chance," she says boldly, shifting in the chair restlessly. "If..." She tips back in her seat, catching Erik's eye at once, and he shrugs, giving her permission. "If you sacrifice your bishop you might get my queen."

The man's eyes haven't left her face, and his lips twitch. "Might?"

Anja hums vaguely, tucking her face and nose back into her scarf.

The man shifts his bishop forward, not far enough, and Anja resists chasing after it. Erik approves, silently charting the different possibilities, seeing the game playing out in one of two ways. In the end there are really only ever two ways, and as the man moves a knight Erik knows it's over for Anja.

She does too, hand hovering over her last pawn, frozen as she looks things over. She slumps back, a soft _oh_ drifting over her scarf before she darts a hand forward and tips over her king in defeat, holding her hand out. "Thank you for the game," she says, very precisely, and the man takes her hand, shaking it over the board.

"Thank  _you_ ," he says, and smiles boldly at her.

Erik shivers, digging his hands deeper into his jacket pockets as he turns to call to the blitz team. Time to break for lunch. He turns back to hustle the rest of the group, and notices the man looking at him, something wistful about his expression. As the kids gather a little off to the side, milling around like cats and throwing leaves at each other, he turns to the man, holding out his hand. "Thank you for playing her."

The man startles; Erik had caught him staring after all. "It's a pleasure," he says as they clasp hands firmly. "She plays very well for someone her age."

"Yes, she does," Erik replies, taking his time about it. The man's eyes are very blue in the gloomy autumn light.

"Tell her if she ever wants a rematch, I'm more than willing."

"I will."

A sudden shriek, and he turns, releasing the man's hand – someone's shoved leaves down Laurel's coat collar, and she dances about, trying to shake them out. He turns back to the man. "Sorry, duty calls."

He inclines his head. "Of course. Until next time."

"Yes, next time," and off he goes, rounding them up, pulling leaves out of Laurel's hood.

 

The trip is labeled a success, owing to a combination of Erik not losing any of the children and their parents calling Tilden to gush. The kids badger him the following Tuesday, picking up where they left off on Saturday, when they'd first gotten the idea of a repeat visit in their heads on the journey back to the school.

"We'll see," he says noncommittally.

"The basketball team plays every week," Laurel offers. Ben Thompson nods – his brother plays.

"We don't meet as often," Erik replies. "How about every three weeks?" When they boo collectively and he laughs, holding his hands up for silence. "Every other?"

The vote passes easily, and they quickly turn their attention to pulling out boards and pairing up. Or, in one case, tripling up, to Erik's surprise. Little Anja sits opposite her brother and the McMurray boy, and the ridiculous twinge of disappointment he feels over being abandoned is smothered quickly by pride – the boys joined forces out of necessity.

He considers the board for a moment before moving on; they won't beat her together either.

 

Tilden readily agrees to bi-monthly excursions with the provision that it won't impact his budget. That's not a problem: there's no entrance fee, and subway fare is cheap enough that none of the parents object, though Erik privately decides to cover anyone who needs it if necessary.

The weather gets colder, the chance of snow growing every day, and when they're back in the park two Saturdays later the trees have been striped bare of all their leaves. It would make for a grim picture but for the bright chatter of the children, their frequent laughs, the rapid-fire discussions that skate through the group faster than the clouds blown across the sky by the stiff wind. Laurel had gotten her hands on a copy of the Fischer book, and it gets passed around the group over and over, the kids citing games and moves and strategies like old rabbis quoting Torah in a debate about God.

They make for a merry group, dispersing easily among the tables. The regulars greet them familiarly, like this was a thousandth appearance instead of a second.

He does a head count, noting where everyone's sitting and their opponents' faces, filing them away just in case. Sarah is playing a man with coke bottle eyeglasses who charms her almost immediately by pretending to cheat horrendously. Jacob is playing his seventy-year-old doppelganger. Anja is...

Anja is nowhere in sight, and Erik feels his heart stop as he stands between tables, looking around for her. He takes a deliberate breath, doing another head count, reaching ten again and he can feel a tremor starting in his hands, a rattling like loose change shaking in a beggar's cup filling his ears.

_Erik, calm yourself, she's fine-_

He wheels toward the firm voice and sees Anja standing beside one of the tables twenty feet away. She sets a pile of chess pieces on the board before ducking back down, and Erik strides over, needing to look at her.

"I'm afraid I was rather clumsy," the man says apologetically. Her partner from their last trip here; Erik barely noticed him sitting there, so focused was he on finding Anja. The man smiles down at her as she stands and dumps another three pieces on the table before setting up the board for both of them. Erik shakes out his hands, stiff from cold and being clenched.

"Thank you, my dear," the man says when Anja takes her seat. She ducks her head in acknowledgment before moving her pawn forward and initiating play, and the man glances up at Erik, mouth curling with amusement as though to say, _Kids, eh?_

Erik turns away, shoving his hands in his pockets, rubbing gloved fingertips over the worn faces of the subway tokens he carries.

 

Minus the brief scare at the beginning, the morning proceeds well enough. He circulates constantly, partly to keep warm, wondering how the kids can do it. Some of them win, most of them lose, and he's managed to get them into the rough approximation of a line when he marches over to collect Anja, always last to leave the board.

She is one of the losers, and they arrive in time to see her shaking hands with her partner.

"Thank you for the game," Anja says, once again without resentment. This time her smile is less shy, though still not as broad as the one on the face of the man sitting across from her, who gives her hand a solid shake.

"You're very welcome, Annie. When you sacrificed your queen-!" He leans back, clapping his hands together appreciatively with a dull thump; he's wearing fingerless gloves. "You're very daring," he says, and Anja blushes, hiding her face in her scarf.

Her brother comes forward to pat her on the back, crowing, "She's the best player of all of us. Everyone knows it."

"No, I'm not," she says sharply, emerging from her huddle to frown up at Jacob. "Mr. Lehnsherr's the best," and to his embarrassment the kids all nod and chime in immediately to sing his praises to Anja's partner. Erik feels his face grow hot as the man gazes up at him, blue eyes soft and terribly intent all at once.

"You should play him!"

Erik startles, snapping out of his stare to look down at his charges. "We need to get going-"

"I'm sure you must be going-"

And they both pause to look at each other.

The kids seize the opportunity at once, Anja jumping up from her seat as they push Erik towards the table.

"C'mon, just one game."

"Do a blitz game!"

"Just a couple of minutes-"

"The trains run all the time-"

"We can eat and walk-"

"I brought a sandwich!"

Endless excuses and encouragement and gentle prodding him forward, and finally Erik throws his hands in the air.

"Stop, stop!" Trying to sound stern and failing spectacularly at covering his amusement. "Enough. I'm sure Mr.…" He looks to the man for help or at least a name.

"Xavier," the man provides, eyes wide and mouth twitching slightly, like he's trying not to laugh.

"I'm sure Mr. Xavier has had enough chess-"

"I wouldn't mind another game, actually," the man, Xavier, says innocently.

Erik ignores him and hopes the children didn't hear. "And we really have to get going, your parents are expecting you. It's almost one-"

"There's still ten minutes!" Tommy Danforth, the wretch, has a wristwatch, and he holds his arm up to show it off. "You could totally play that quick,  _we_  do it all the time."

The rest of the kids back him up and before Erik knows it he's in the chair. Jacob Kaufmann is setting the clock for them and he's completely surrounded by ten-year-olds and he sighs, giving up.

"I have been overruled," he says, pulling his gloves off. He likes to feel the pieces when he plays.

Xavier, head tipped slightly to the side, is grinning shamelessly at him, and it makes him think of- Something. Something far away, awesome in the original meaning of the word, and when Xavier's grin fades Erik realizes he's been staring and hasn't heard a thing Jacob said. He peeks at the clock – five minutes. The feeling fades.

He clears his throat, looks at the board. One of the kids reset the board for them while he was daydreaming; he's playing white. He can't remember the last time he played an adult. "Ready?"

Xavier inclines his head. "When you are."

Jacob starts the clock.

 

They don't speak. At first there's no time – Erik hasn't played speed chess with someone his own age in longer than he can remember, and for the first twenty seconds he can feel himself flailing as he's confronted with strategy that stretches beyond two moves. But they quickly fall into a rhythm and soon enough there's no need to talk. They play. One moves, taps the clock, the other moves, taps the clock.

Muscle memory. A deep stretch after a long rest, the feel of something popping low in one's back, and they're already – only – two minutes into the game and Erik mourns the lost time, knowing he could have done things better than he has.

Their back and forth stutters three minutes in, when Erik lures Xavier into a king-side rook sacrifice that shouldn't work but does, and the man sits considering for a number of seconds. Tapping his fingertips – they have to be cold, Erik's hands are freezing and he foolishly doesn't have the benefit of even fingerless gloves – against his very red lips, frowning at the board.

"I always fall for this," he murmurs absently. "And you- But no, that won't... No, you will, you always did-"

"Excuse me?"

Xavier looks up, casually moving his queen and palming the clock in one smooth movement. "Sorry, sorry, thinking out loud, bad habit, I know."

It is Erik's turn to frown. "You said I always-"

"Don't worry about it."

He doesn't. He stops frowning, castles and hits the clock.

 

Erik has less than twenty seconds left. Xavier has half that – their only verbal exchange cost him ten precious seconds. The field has thinned out profoundly, dead soldiers lined up on either side of the board. The only sound is the whisper of pieces across the board, the slap and click of the clock, and-

Seventeen. Sixteen. Fifteen.

Erik tips his king. He knows how this will end; in hindsight he can see they spent the first four minutes fooling around, dancing almost, but the last minute got heated and he won't survive past the next six moves. Xavier has him in three, to be painfully honest, and he must know it too because he isn't looking at the board, he's looking at Erik, and Erik hears the children around him murmuring in disappointment but they are very far away right now.

Xavier does not look happy. He looks-

Erik offers his hand. "Thank you."

For a moment he doesn't think the man is going to take it. He sits there, elbows hooked on the arms of his chair so his hands dangle over his lap, and it strikes Erik how small he looks, how young, bundled up in a big wool coat, pale but for his apple-red cheeks and his endlessly blue eyes. They are shiny now, and everything is very still around them as Erik puzzles over his expression, which is one of profound misery.

He closes his hand. The kids have all gone quiet. "Are you alright?"

Xavier takes a deep, shaky-sounding breath, and says-

The ding of the clock is loud, breaking Erik out of his reverie, and he glances down at the board. The clock ran out on his turn, but the game looks to be lost anyway, and he already had his king tipped, his hand out before he even realized.

The man – Xavier? – grasps his hand, gloved palm soft against Erik's skin, contrasting against thoroughly chilled fingertips that press his flesh.

"Thank you for the game," the man says.

"Thank you," Erik replies awkwardly. He could have sworn he had eighteen seconds to go. The murmur around him says the kids are hiding their disappointment badly. He rises from his seat. "Annie is very brave to play you more than once," he says, loudly to catch the group's attention.

The man ducks his head, biting his lip. "I hope you are the same, Mr. Lehnsherr." His eyes flick up to Erik's.

"I must set an example for my students," Erik says wryly, inclining his head. He checks his watch – 12:55. They have a train to catch. "Until next time."

"Next time," the man echoes.

Erik turns to get the kids moving; they are already rehashing his game. It is exciting, the way they tell it; he will not mind over much hearing about it again. His own recollection of it, he finds, is rather foggy.

Quite unlike Anja's, he suspects, who is slowest to leave and continuously looking back at the table as they walk away. She chews the inside of her cheek, eyebrows furrowed, as if performing mental arithmetic.

More like an autopsy on his loss, he thinks, and smiles.

 

On the subway, the kids sit in a long row before him, the car rocking around him as he stands after giving up his seat to a weary-looking grandmother. The screech of steel on steel is comfortingly familiar, and as the train takes a turn he realizes with a jolt that he cannot recall the man's name. Anja's partner.

He shifts his balance and slides his hand along the metal bar over head – he never bothers with the plastic handles, they never feel secure enough – and worries over it for the time it takes to reach their stop. It is not a very long time at all. He finds he cannot recall the man ever giving his name in the first place. Next time. He'll get it next time.

Erik has missed playing with people his own age.

**Author's Note:**

> There's actually 7k more of this, with an actual plot, but since I'm terrible and didn't finish it I've cut and tidied up what's here to amount to a more self-contained one-shot. Hopefully it's at least a little acceptable.


End file.
